Reflection Paper
Dick and Jane: We Play Outside Resources for Children
INFO 683
Professor Denise Agosto Lynn Kennedy Twedt
"Look, Sally, look. Look at what I can do”--- Dick and Jane: We Play Outside, chapter five (Gray & Sharp, 1965). Look at what I can do, read! This was the purpose, intent, and mission of the famous children’s book series, Dick and Jane.
“The Dick and Jane Reader Series was an extremely popular Reader collection used in classrooms in the United States from the 1930s-1970s. Peaking in popularity in the 1950s, it is estimated that almost 80% of Readers used in 1st grade classrooms were from the Dick and Jane series. These Readers focused on whole language and repetition to teach children how to read. University of Missouri-Columbia professor, Dr. A. Sterl Artley, played an important part in the production and study of these books. Dr. Artley won the Thomas Jefferson Award and was a Reading Hall of Fame winner for his work on the series” (University of Missouri Libraries, 2013).
What you read, view, hear, are exposed to and what we absorb as a child helps create and mold the person that we become later in life. Watching your favorite childhood television show brings back wonderful memories, just as reading your favorite childhood book brings back all those feelings flooding back to yesteryear. The power of the written word makes a huge
difference to young readers. So much can be discovered and enjoyed in a book. Many children travel in their minds to faraway places, exotic locales, and experience varying cultures, language, settings, characters, and experiences through the text of a book. Although I was a devout, ardent and enthusiastic reader from a young age, it was at age five when I got my very own library card and could read independently that the written word made a major impression on me. It was in first grade at age six that I was first introduced to the basal readers at my one-room country rural schoolhouse known as the Dick and Jane series, specifically Dick and Jane: We Play Outside.
I read a lot of books as a child. I can vividly remember my mother taking my three siblings and me to the library in town on Saturday mornings. It was a long drive on country dirt and gravel roads but worth the effort. My Mom was and still is at age 88 an avid reader and I attribute her modeling of readership as the attributing factor to my love of reading. I remember being crazy about horses as a young girl and checking out every horse book that our small town library had to offer. It was however in my first grade year of school at Brooklyn #42, a one-room school in rural Beresford, South Dakota that educated grades one through eight all in one room with one teacher that I began enriching my reading and becoming more fluent reading text through the little stories of Dick and Jane, their family and friends. These books known back then as basal readers were our textbooks used to teach reading and associated skills to
schoolchildren. “Commonly called ‘reading books’ or ‘readers’ they are usually published as anthologies that combine previously published short stories, excerpts of longer narratives, and original works. A standard basal series comes with individual identical books for students, a Teacher's Edition of the book, and a collection of workbooks, assessments, and activities. Basal readers/basal reading series are highly organized reading textbooks used to teach reading and associated skills to schoolchildren. Stories are chosen to illustrate and develop specific reading skills, which are taught in a strict pre-determined sequence. Basal readers contain stories in which limited vocabulary is introduced in a controlled fashion from certain word lists which gradually escalate in difficulty. Think Dick and Jane” (Penn State Libraries, 2013). I really cannot remember if our teacher had a teacher’s edition for our Dick and Jane readers or not.
The Scott Foresman Company, Grosset and Dunlap, and Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers published what is perhaps the most famous basal series, whose stories starred two children named Dick and Jane. “Dick and Jane books emphasized memorizing words on sight, a
method which came to be known as ‘look and say.’ These Dick and Jane books with several short stories embedded into each volume, featured simple vocabulary words and subdued illustrations in a 1950s – 1960s style. The readers were written by William S. Gray and Zerna Sharp. The books contained upbeat, short, and easily readable stories for young children. The pages were full of colored illustrations of the characters and the font was easy-to-read in a large typeface” (University of Missouri Libraries, 2013).
As I re-read, reviewed, and re-thought about the Dick and Jane series of books for young children, I began to think of years gone by. The Dick and Jane book, We Play Outside is
comprised of 31 varying short stories. Some are as brief as three pages. The main characters are introduced as Dick and Jane with supporting characters developed as Sally, Mother, Father, Spot, Puff, Pam, Grandmother, etc. The stories are repetitive, using a whole word or sight word
method of reading. Phrases such as, “Oh, see. O, see Jane. Funny, funny Jane” (Gray & Sharp, 1965) are prominent in the text.
The very simplistic drawings and illustrations featured in the books were completed by two artists, “Eleanor Campbell and Keith Ward. In the 1950s, Robert Childress took over as the illustrator and later Richard Wiley was the illustrator” (Bilz, 2011). In looking at the
illustrations, they are truly a walk down memory lane for me. The watercolors are in subdued hues, characters in their time period clothing of the 1930s – 1960s, and children shown playing with dogs, cats, and teddy bears. Youngsters playing in a neighborhood pots and pan band or feeding the birds and squirrels. No thoughts of technology evident in these books.
I don’t remember from my childhood noticing that there were black characters in this book but I did notice now. According to Wikipedia, “Black characters and characters from other races and cultures were not introduced until 1965, when Dick and Jane books were already
declining in popularity” (Wikipedia, 2013). I find it interesting that multiculturalism, the
presentation of races other than white Caucasians, and this use of diversity would be presented in a basal school textbook reader. I am sure adults of that era questioned this presentation. I think it is important to note, this series was definitely before its time in the promotion of unity, understanding, and acceptance of varying races and cultures in children. “This particular title was actually promoted as a ‘multi-ethnic edition’” (Wikipedia, 2013).
Another interesting fact that I uncovered was that many of the Dick and Jane books were also “published in ‘Cathedral’ editions for Catholic schools. In these Cathedral editions Sally, Dick and Jane had a name change to Judy, John and Jean” (Bilz, 2011). I know textbooks now that are published in state centered editions, for example, our math series at our elementary school by Harcourt is the Florida edition but I had never heard of books being published as a religious edition before.
In my younger years, during my attendance at country school, the characters of Dick, Jane and Sally seemed to be real kids, doing things that real life kids do, they played pranks on one another, they played dress up with their mother’s and father’s clothes, they played with simple toys, went for visits to their grandfather and grandmother’s farm, and they ran and played with their pets. This book, and the others in the series were developmentally and intellectually appropriate for me in first and second grade. I did not attend Kindergarten so these emerged me into the world of my first school experience and my beginning reading involvement. They also gave me friends to read about and enjoy time with. Living on a ranch, miles from the next house, with siblings that were seven and nine years older than me, and one that was six years younger made for a lonely childhood. The few friends I would interact with and play alongside
at country school and the “friends” I read about in my Dick and Jane books filled that social and emotional void for me.
Horning explains, “What makes a good children’s book? There are no quick, easy
answers to this question because there are so many different kinds of children’s books that can be outstanding for different reasons. Furthermore, as times change and our perception of children evolves, so too do our standards for excellence in children’s books” (Horning, 2010). Our school library media center has within its holdings, several of the Dick and Jane books and my Kindergarten and first grade students cannot get enough of them. For the most part, they can read the short simple text independently; enjoy the realistic fiction storylines, sight word recognition, and short story format. These books have endured the test of time. In Horning’s book From Cover to Cover, great books stand the test of time when they have “1. outstanding text; 2. excellent illustrations; 3. successful integration of the two.” (Horning, 2010).
This resource would and does still make an impression on children today. The impact is the same after all these years, just different in varying degrees. Teachers at my school do not see the value in these readers but parents and young emergent readers do. Parents are thrilled that their young children can read the sight words, short phrases, and repetitive text independently. Despite the teacher’s thoughts and their verbal opinions to me, I feel as though they know these books and stories are still valuable to beginning readers. The authors took on a task of creating likable, everyday characters in simple settings, using simple repeated text, and fulfilled a children’s literature need. The subject, characters, and time period are long in the past but can still be accessible, real, and relatable to today’s children. These books encourage children to think, experience, and live in an era long gone. Dick and Jane: We Play Outside is still one of the most important books in my life.
References
Bilz, R.K. (2011). Remember dick and jane. Retrieved on December 5, 2013 from
http://www.arnenixoncenter.org/research/biblio_PDF/remember_dick_and_jane.pdf. Gray, W., & Sharp, Z. (1965). Dick and jane: We play outside. New York, NY: Grosset &
Dunlap.
Horning, K.T. (2010). From cover to cover: Evaluating and reviewing children’s books. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Penn State Libraries, (2013). Basal readers. Retrieved on December 5, 2013 from http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/researchguides/basalreaders.html.
University of Missouri Libraries, (2013). Children’s literature and special collections. Retrieved on December 6, 2013 from
http://library.missouri.edu/exhibits/childrenliterature/djreaders.htm. Wikipedia, (2013). Dick and jane. Retrieved on December 4, 2013 from
